Jay Cost has a great piece on today at the RealClearPolitics-HorseRaceBlog. His post concerns the internal rifts in the Democratic party and the failure of the White House to recognize them. Jay created a map (great visual) marking the offices of the House leadership and Congressmen involved in the health-care debate. The majority are coastal liberals while the majority of Dems from districts that McCain won are from the South. The liberals (think Waxman & Pelosi) wrote the bills so of course liberals and progressives approve.

…the moderate and conservative Democrats – whose votes are needed for passage yet who run the risk of defeat next fall should the broad middle of the country sour on the reform efforts – weren’t fully consulted, and don’t like the bills. Hence, the internal friction – which corresponds pretty well with age-old sectional divisions..

Jay lists several reasons why the WH should have seen this rift coming but I am going to list two:

For the months between November and January, we were treated to endless comparisons of Obama to the great presidents of the days of yore. One of them was Franklin Roosevelt. Question: who stopped the New Deal dead in its tracks after 1938? It wasn’t the Republicans alone. It was Southern Democrats working in alliance with the Republicans. Who are the marginal members standing between Obama and a health care bill…Southern Democrats!…

and

Fourteen of these seats changed hands in either 2006 or 2008 when Emanuel was in a leadership position in the House. Is this not a sufficiently representative sample to know that there could be trouble?

As it is now, Southern, Conservative or Blue-Dog Democrats are in the perilous position of being damned if they do, damned if they don’t when it comes to the health-care bill. A “No” vote satisfies their constituents and keeps them in office but deepens the rift.

“My campaign is not based on a foundation of lies,” Womack said today. “My values are not lies. It’s just the information I provided to the people is false.

Womack admitted again today that he lied on both his campaign Web site and his Facebook page, which he also uses to campaign, by claiming he was 23 years old, graduated from West End High School in 2005 and received a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Alabama A&M in 2009.

Records indicate Womack is 21 years old and dropped out of Wenonah High School in 2004 as a freshman. Student record databases at Alabama A&M show Womack was never a student at the university.

“I have been told not to drop out of the race,” Womack said, but declined to say who told him that. “I apologize to District 6 voters for this. … This here is not the end of the world.”

When confronted with the discrepancies Monday, Womack admitted the embellishments and said he wanted to make himself look older and more dignified so voters would take him more seriously. At that time, he also admitted he didn’t live in Birmingham’s District 6, and said he instead lived in Fairfield.

Today, he said he did indeed live in Birmingham’s District 6.

I am telling you, this kid has got a promising career in Birmingham politics. He can’t be any worse than the current mayor of Birmingham:

An investment banker pleaded guilty Tuesday to bribing Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, the second co-defendant to admit funneling cash and gifts to Langford in exchange for $7.1 million in bond business.

Reactionary at Flashpoint did some more digging on Dr. Mr. Womack and the story only gets better.

UPDATE- The President is not in favor of a single payer system and if he was, he believes the insurance companies would be able to compete with a government option that does not have to show a profit and can utilize taxpayer funds as needed. If you don’t believe me, believe your lying eyes.

Private insurers should have no problem competing with a government plan, Obama said. “They do it all the time,” according to Obama. “UPS and FedEx are doing just fine…. It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.”

1.) The U.S. Post Office is the only entity allowed by federal law to deliver first class mail to your mailbox. In fact, Fedex and UPS are strictly prohibited from delivering “non-urgent” letters. If the government can fairly compete and is setting fair rules, wouldn’t the post office be open to competition at your mailbox?

2.) If Americans were offered “free” postage paid for by massive government spending and tax hikes, would Fedex and UPS still exist?

3.) The Post Office is on track to lose a staggering $7 billion this year alone. How will a government-run health care plan manage taxpayer resources more efficiently?

4.) Postmaster General John Potter says he lacks the “tools” necessary to run the Post Office effectively like a business. Would a government-run health care system have the tools it needs to run as effectively as the private sector entities it is replacing?

5.) On the one hand, the President remarks how great his public health care plan will be. On the other hand, he notes it won’t be good enough to crowd out your private insurance, i.e. the Post Office comparison. So which is it Mr. President? Will it be so great that private insurance disappears or so awful that it isn’t worth creating in the first place?

6.) But the most important question is this: if you have an urgent piece of mail you need delivered, life or death, who are you going to call? Everyone saying the government…please raise your hands. (crickets)

So all those in favor of single-payer head to your nearest Post Office for your H1M1 vaccine.

Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations. The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other developed country. Since the mid- 1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to U.S. residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined. In only five of the past thirty-four years did a scientist living in the United States not win or share in the prize. Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.

Despite serious challenges, such as escalating costs and care for the uninsured, the U.S. health care system compares favorably to those in other developed countries.

Americans have better access to important new technologies such as medical imaging than do patients in Canada or Britain. An overwhelming majority of leading American physicians identify computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade—even as economists and policy makers unfamiliar with actual medical practice decry these techniques as wasteful. The United States has thirty-four CT scanners per million Americans, compared to twelve in Canada and eight in Britain. The United States has almost twenty-seven MRI machines per million people compared to about six per million in Canada and Britain.

Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians. When asked about their own health care instead of the “health care system,” more than half of Americans (51.3 percent) are very satisfied with their health care services, compared with only 41.5 percent of Canadians; a lower proportion of Americans are dissatisfied (6.8 percent) than Canadians (8.5 percent).

Look real hard at these pictures and see if you can spot them. (H’tip to Dana L).

Dangerous Mob!

More hilarious photos at the link.

I have found their leader. He’s cunning, dangerous and has managed to infiltrate a town-hall without being noticed, he’s probably a sleeper cell for those right-wing extremist groups that DHS warned us about. Worst of all, he’s got that “fishy” look. I have definitely seen his face at the post office.